PM Modi highlights Digital India milestones

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has lauded the use of Unified Payments Interface (UPI) across the country and said the digital transactions in India had jumped 19 times in the last seven years.

"UPI has become the world's leading country in terms of digital transactions in a very short period. In just seven years, digital transactions in India has jumped 19 times. Today our banking system is operational 24 hours, 7 days and 12 months anytime, anywhere in the country," the Prime Minister said while speaking at the launch of two customer-centric initiatives of RBI.

PM Modi said, "Till 6-7 years ago, banking, pension, insurance, everything used to be like an 'exclusive club in India'. Common citizens of the country, poor families, farmers, small traders-businessmen, women, Dalits-deprived-backwards, all these facilities were far away for all of them."

The Prime Minister further pointed out that earlier, there were no bank branches, no staff, no internet, no awareness in the banking sector.
"The people who had the responsibility of taking these facilities to the poor also never paid any attention to it. Rather, various excuses were made for not changing. It was said that there is no bank branch, no staff, no internet, no awareness, no idea what were the arguments," the Prime Minister said.

The Prime Minister also lauded the role of cooperative banks in strengthening the banking sector.

"To further strengthen the banking sector, cooperative banks were also brought under the purview of RBI. Due to this the governance of these banks is also improving and the trust in this system is getting stronger even among the lakhs of depositors who are there," he said.

PM Modi has also launched two innovative customer-centric initiatives of the Reserve Bank of India.

(ANI)